Contexts of Drama DRAMA, LITERATURE, AND REPRESENTATIONAL ART Drama begins in make-believe, in the play acting of children, in the ritual of primitive religion. And it never forsakes its primitive beginnings, for imitative action is its essence. When an actor appears on stage, he makes believe he is someone other than himself, much as a child does, much as primitive people still do. Thus, like play-acting and ritual, drama creates its experience by doing things that can be heard and seen. “Drama,” in fact comes from a Greek word meaning “thing done.” And the things it does, as with play-acting and ritual, create a world apart—a world modeled on ours yet leading its own charmed existence. Drama, of course, is neither primitive ritual nor child's play, but it does share with them the essential quality of enactment. This quality should remind us that drama is not solely a form of literature. It is at once literary art and representational art. As literary art, a play is a fiction made out of words. It has a plot, characters, and dialogue. But it is a special kind of fiction—a fiction acted out rather than narrated. In a novel or short story, we learn about characters and events through the words of a narrator who. stands between us and them, but in a play nothing stands between us and the total make-up of its world. Characters appear and events happen without any intermediate comment or explanation. Drama, then, offers us a direct presentation of its imaginative reality. In this sense it is repre- sentational art. As students of drama, we are faced with something of a paradox. Because it is literature, a play can be read. But because it is representational art, a play is meant to be witnessed. We can see this problem in other terms. The text of a play is something like the score of a symphony—a finished work, yet only a potentiality until it is performed. Most plays, after all, are written to be performed, Those eccentric few that are not—that are written only to.774 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA. be read—we usually refer to as closet dramas. Very little can take place in a closet, but anything is possible in the theater. For most of us, however, the experience of drama is usually confined to plays in print rather than in performance. This means that we have to be unusually resourceful in our study of drama. Careful reading is not enough. We have to be creative readers as well. We have to imagine drama on the stage: not only must we attend to the meanings and implications of words—we also have to envision the words in performance. By doing so, we can begin to experi- ence the understanding and pleasure that spectators gain when they attend a play. Their place, of course, is the theater, where our study properly begins. DRAMA AND THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE The magic of theater, its ability to conjure up even such incredible characters as the Ghost in Hamlet, or the Witches in Macbeth, or Death in Everyman, depends on the power of spectacle. And by spectacle we mean all the sights and sounds of performance—the slightest twitch or the boldest thrust of a sword, the faintest whisper or the loudest cry. Spectacle, in short, is the means by which the fictional world of a play is brought to life in the theater. When we witness a play, our thoughts and feelings are provoked as much by the spectacle as by the words themselves. Thus in reading a play, we should continually seek to create its spectacle in the imaginative theater of our minds. To do so, we must take a special approach to the text of a play. It is not enough to read the text as simply a sequence of statements made by characters talking to one another or to themselves. We must also read the text as a script for performance, as if we were directors and actors involved in staging the play. Once we interpret it as a script, we can then see that the text contains innumerable cues from which we can construct a spectacle in our mind's eye. If we are attentive to those cues, they will tell us about the various elements that make up the total spectacle: setting, costuming, props, blocking (the arrangement of characters on the stage), movement, gestures, intonation, and pacing (the tempo and coordination of performance). By keeping those elements continuously in mind, we can imagine what the play looks and sounds like on stage. Then we will truly be entering into the world of the play, and by doing so we will not only understand, but also experience, its meaning. Some dramatists, such as Ibsen, Shaw, and Williams, provide extensive and explicit directions for performance in parenthetical remarks preceding the dialogue and interspersed with it. But no matter how extensive their remarks may be, they are never complete guides to production. They still require us to infer elements of the spectacle from the dialogue itself. Other dramatists such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Moliére provide little, 775, DRAMA AND THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE if any, explicit guidance about staging. When we read their plays, we must gather our cues almost entirely from the dialogue. Thus we have chosen a passage from Shakespeare both to illustrate how the text of a play can embody a script for performance, and to demonstrate the analytic method appropriate for discovering its implicit cues. In the next paragraph we will provide a brief explanation of the context for the passage. With that background in hand, you should then examine the dialogue carefully to see what details you can infer on your own about the arrangement, gestures, and physical interaction of the characters. The following passage from Act I, Scene 2, of Othello depicts a confronta- tion between Othello, leader of the Venetian military forces, and Brabantio, a Venetian senator. The confrontation is occasioned by the fact that Othello has secretly courted and married Brabantio’s daughter Desdemona—a fact revealed to Brabantio in the previous scene by Roderigo, a jealous suitor of Desdemona, and lago, the duplicitous subordinate of Othello. As the passage begins, Othello and his officers Cassio and lago are on their way to meet with the Duke of Venice, who has sent messengers to summon Othello to a military planning session. 1aco Come, captain, will you go? OTHELLO Have with you. casio Here comes another troop to seek for you. Enter Brabantio, Roderigo, and others with lights and weapons. 1aco_ It is Brabantio. General, be advised, He comes to bad intent. orHeLLo Holla! stand there! RODERIGO Signior, it is the Moor. BRABANTIO Down with him, thief! They draw on both sides. 1aco. You, Roderigo! Come, sir, | am for you. omeLLo Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. Good signior, you shall more command with years Than with your weapons. BRABANTIO. © thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter? Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her! For I'll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound, Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage that she shunned The wealthy curléd darlings of our nation, Would ever have, incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of such a thing as thou-to fear, not to delight, Judge me the world if tix Hol gross in sense That thou hast practiced on her with foul charms,776 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals, That weaken motion. I'll have’t disputed on; Tis probable, and palpable to thinking. | therefore apprehend and do attach thee For an abuser of the world, a practicer Of arts inhibited and out of warrant. Lay hold upon him. If he do resist, Subdue him at his peril. OTHELLO. Hold your hands, Both you of my inclining and the rest Were it my cue to fight, | should have known it Without a prompter. This passage depicts a confrontation that twice threatens to erupt into a pitched sword battle between Brabantio’s followers and those of Othello. Thus it is a highly dramatic moment in the play, and our purpose should be to envision the performance as fully and as precisely as possible. From the initial remarks of lago and Othello, it appears that they must be moving to exit from one side of the stage, while Cassio, who is standing. nearby, has not yet turned to depart and thus sees a group of people with torches entering from the opposite side of the stage. Cassio does not identify them—presumably because they are still some distance away and the light of their torches obscures their faces. But Cassio’s announcement of “another troop” must cause lago and Othello to reverse their direction, by which time Brabantio and his followers have moved close enough to be recognized by lago. lago, of course, is directly responsible for Brabantio’s appearance on the scene, having previously aroused his anger with the revelation of Othello’s elopement. But since Othello and his followers are unaware of lago’s double-dealing, they can only take his warning about Brabantio's “bad intent” as the straightforward advice of a loyal officer. Thus, when lago utters his warning, we should imagine Cassio and the other attendants of Othello moving forward and unsheathing their swords as though to make ready for a battle with Brabantio and his troop. Once we do so, we can recognize that Othello’s command—'stand there!”—which might seem to be addressed to Brabantio and his followers, is in fact addressed to his own men. Even though Othello is a military man, he does not wish to settle this personal matter by force of arms, as is clear from his subsequent remarks to Brabantio. We might, then, even imagine Othello raising his arm at this point to accentuate that command of restraint to his troops. Brabantio, however, responding to Roderigo’s recognition of Othello—“Signior, it is the Moor’'—incites his own followers to attack Othello and his men. Thus, at the moment that Brabantio makes his command to attack—Down with him, thief!—we should picture the two groups of men not only drawing their swords but also moving toward one another. lago’s challenge to Roderigo—'You, Roderigo! Come, sir, | am for 7 DRAMA AND THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE you’’—should cause us to see him as leading the charge of Othello’s men. He is, of course, simply feigning an attack to sustain the impression of being Othello’s loyal officer. At this point Othello gives his second command of the scene—‘Keep up your bright swords.” When he does so, we should not only hear the authority of his voice but also envision the authority of his movement. We should imagine Othello, without any sword at all, stepping between the two groups of men, raising his arms to quell the movement on both sides, and then turning to address Brabantio face to face with a courtly but gentle reproof—Good signior, you shall more command with years/Than with your weapons.” At the same time that Othello is turning to address Brabantio, we should also visualize the two groups of men responding to his command by stepping back and away from one another, as well as relaxing their sword arms, so that Othello and Brabantio become the exclusive focus in the foreground of the scene. Othello’s attempt to calm the two sides does not by any means subdue Brabantio’s anger. Brabantio instead delivers a lengthy attack on Othello’s character, uttering a series of insults and accusations so extreme that we might well expect them to arouse Othello to defend his honor with his sword. But Othello, we notice, is silent throughout the harangue—which is a powerful dramatic statement in itself. That restraint should also lead us to see Othello as standing in a dignified posture, arms by his sides, while Brabantio accentuates his insults with physical gestures and movements, first pointing his finger accusingly at him, then raising his arm in self- righteous judgment, and probably even moving back and forth in front of him as he gives voice to his accusations. Then, at the conclusion of his harangue, we should imagine Brabantio as once again turning to his troop of men to issue his second command—‘Lay hold upon him. If he do resist,/Subdue him at his peril.” Once again we should imagine the two groups of men raising their swords and moving to attack one another. And once again, when Othello gives his third command—‘Hold your hands,/Both you of my inclining and the rest” —we should see him moving between the two groups to prevent a battle from taking place. That visual image of the action is important for us to keep in mind, because it is a definitive spectacle. It embodies above all the exceptional authority and restraint of Othello: twice in this brief passage he is faced with a potentially explosive situation, and twice he subdues the situation and himself with extraordinary grace. Our discussion has thus far treated the passage as a script to guide us in imagining the physical interaction of the characters. We have examined each bit of the dialogue with an eye to the cues it contains about the gestures, movements, and spatial relations of the characters at every moment in the scene, Our approach has emphasized the theatrical, rather than the literary, implications of the passage, Detailed as it is, however, our778 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA analysis has not yet envisioned the action on stage in a theater. And we must do that too, if we wish to experience and understand the total spectacle of the scene. At this point, then, it might be tempting to imagine the action on a modern stage, equipped with machinery for sets and special lighting effects. We might imagine the characters arranged in front of a set depict- ing, for example, houses and public buildings, for we know from earlier cues in the text that the scene takes place on a street in Venice. We might, in turn, imagine the stage as completely darkened, except for the torches carried by the attendants of Othello and Brabantio, for we know also from earlier cues in the text, as well as from the torches themselves, that the scene takes place at about midnight. And we might, finally, imagine our- selves sitting in a darkened theater and witnessing the scene, which is framed like a picture by the arch of the stage. Then we would have a vividly dramatic image and experience of the potential conflict between Brabantio’s men and the supporters of Othello. Then, for example, the space initially dividing the two groups of men would be dramatically set off by the darkness engulfing it. Then their aggressive movements toward each other would be dramatically accentuated by the fiery movement of their torches. Then their weapons, reflecting the light of their torches, would truly appear to be “bright swords,” as Othello calls them, particularly by contrast with the surrounding darkness. And then, each time Othello stepped between them, their response to his command would be visible in the subduing of that fiery brightness. All in all, the spectacle would be as dazzling as the authority of Othello himself. But that spectacle is not what Shakespeare’s seventeenth-century audi- ences would have seen when they witnessed the play. The Globe Theater, where Shakespeare's plays were originally produced, was an open-air structure without sets or lights of any kind. Thus the spectators of Shake- speare’s time could not have witnessed the “realistic” illusion of a midnight street scene such as we have imagined in the previous paragraph. They would have seen the action take place in broad daylight on a bare stage without a backdrop. Thus they would have depended wholly upon the language, the actors, and their torches to evoke a sense of that dark Vene- tian street suddenly lighted up by those two fiery groups of men. Even so, they would have had a more intimate involvement with the characters and the action, for the Globe stage, rather than being set behind an arch, extended out into the audience itself. Their experience of the scene would thus have been quite different from that provided by our modern stage version. In light of that difference, we might well ask which version is valid. Both, in fact, are valid, but for different reasons. The modern version is valid, primarily because it is true to the theatrical conditions of our own time. Most modern theaters, after all, are not designed like the Globe, and if we attend a performance of Othello we should not expect it to duplicate the scene as produced in Shakespeare’s time. But when we are reading the play we can imagine how it would have been produced in the Globe and thus be 779 DRAMA AND OTHER LITERARY FORMS. true to the theatrical conditions for which Shakespeare created it. Once we have imagined any play in the context of the theater for which it was written, we can also bring that understanding to any production we may happen to witness. We can compare our imagined production with the production on stage, and by doing so we can recognize how the di- rector and actors have adapted the original context of the play to their own theatrical circumstances. If, for example, we were to attend a production of Othello, we might see that scene with Brabantio, Othello, and their followers performed on a bare stage, without sets or props of any kind. Having imagined the scene in its original theatrical context, we would then not be surprised or puzzled by that bare stage, but would recognize that the director was attempting to incorporate an important element of seventeenth-century theater in a contemporary production. By being his- torically informed play-readers, we can also become critically enlightened play-goers. With this in mind, we shall preface cach of the plays in the “Classical to Neoclassical Drama” section with a description of the theater for which it was written. Those descriptions will provide a context for imagining the plays in their original theatrical setting. For this reason we recommend that before reading any play in that section, you read the the- atrical description preceding it. DRAMA AND OTHER LITERARY FORMS In the preceding section we considered drama primarily as a theatrical event—a representational art to be performed and witnessed. In doing so, we were concerned with the uniquely dramatic experience created by a play in performance. But any performance, moving as it may be, is an interpretation—ot how the lines should be enacted and delivered. Thus every production of a play stresses some words and minimizes others, includes some meanings and excludes others. No single production can sibly convey all the implications in the language of a play. This should femind us that drama is also a form of literature—an art made out of words—and should be understood in relation not only to the theater but also to the other literary forms: story, poem, and essay. In relating drama to the other literary forms, we might first look again at the diagram in the general introduction to this book. That diagram, you will recall, locates and defines each form according to the unique way it Wises words and communicates them to the reader. Drama in its pure form tise words to create action through the dialogue of characters talking to ‘one another rather than to the reader: its essential quality is interaction. But the diagram, as we noted earlier, also represents the proximity of the forms fo each other, Like a story, drama is concerned with plot and character. Like # poem, iis overheard rather than being addressed to a reader. Like780 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA essay, it is capable of being used to explore issues and propose ideas. Using these relationships as points of departure, we can now examine some of the ways in which drama takes on the characteristics and devices of the other forms. Drama and Narration A play is at its most dramatic, of course, when it uses the give-and-take of dialogue to create interaction. But the interaction always takes place within a specific context—a background in time and place without which it cannot be properly understood, To bring about this understanding, drama turns to the narrative techniques of the story. This is not to say that we should expect to find storytellers addressing us directly in plays. Occasionally they do turn up (like the Stage Manager in Our Town), but more often the characters become storytellers in their dialogue with one another. The most obvious form of this storytelling occurs at the beginning of plays, and is appropri- ately called exposition because it sets forth and explains in a manner typical of narrative. Exposition is important not only because it establishes the mood of a play but also because it conveys information about the world of that play. Through expository dialogue the dramatist may reveal information about the public state of affairs, as in the opening of Oedipus Rex; or exposition may disclose information about past actions and private relations of the characters, as in the opening of Othello. Often the information comes in bits and pieces of dialogue, as in life itself, so that we must put it together on our own. But once we have done so, we have a background for understanding the action that takes place during the play. Related to exposition is another narrative device, called retrospection. Often, during the process of action, characters look back and survey significant events that took place well before the time of the play; and when this happens, drama is again using an element of narration. Sometimes retrospection may lead to major revelations about the characters and the motivations for their behavior, as in the lengthy conversation between Brick and Big Daddy toward the end of Act II of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Sometimes retrospection may be the principal activity of the play, as in Oedipus Rex where the initial circumstances in the play gradually lead Oedipus to be- come so completely preoccupied with his past that the plot turns into a quest for his parentage. Thus far we have looked at narrative elements referring to pre-play action, but there are also occasions when narration is used to convey the action of the play itself—when narration replaces interaction. Occasions such as these are produced when offstage action is reported rather than represented—for even when characters are offstage they are still doing 781 DRAMA AND OTHER LITERARY FORMS things that we must know about in order to have a total view of the action. When offstage action is reported, a play becomes most nearly like a story. Words then are being used to develop a view of character and situation rather than to create action through dialogue. This process can be seen most clearly in Oedipus Rex, when the Second Messenger tells the Chora- gus about the death of lokasté and the self-blinding of Oedipus. The inter- action on stage ceases entirely for the length of almost fifty lines, and what we get instead has all the features of a miniature story. The Messenger first establishes his narrative authority, then moves into his tale, supplying detailed information, offering explanations for facts he cannot provide, reporting dialogue, and concluding with a general reflec- tion on the fate of Oedipus and lokasté, whose experience he sees as epito- mizing the “misery of mankind.” In trying to explain why Sophocles has these events reported rather than showing them on stage, we might simply conclude that they are too gruesome to be displayed. But it is also true that through the Messenger’s report Sophocles is able to provide a comment on the meaning of the events. The Messenger’s commentary brings us to the last important element of narration in drama—choric commentary. When the narrator of a story wishes to comment on characters and events, he can do so at will. But the dramatist, of course, cannot suddenly appear in the play—or on stage—to provide a point of view on the action. The dramatist’s alternative is the cho- tus, or choric characters—personages, that is, who are relatively detached from the action and can thus stand off from it, somewhat like a narrator, to reflect on the significance of events. In Greek drama the chorus performed this function. The existence of a chorus, however, is no guarantee that its opinions are always to be trusted. Sometimes it can be as wrongheaded as any of the more involved characters. Sometimes it is completely reliable, as in its con cluding remarks in Oedipus Rex about the frailty of the human condition, Choric commentary, then, provides a point of view, but not necessarily an authoritative one, or one to be associated necessarily with the dramatist. In each case it has to be judged in the context of the entire play. But whether it is valid, or partially reliable, or completely invalid, the chorus does pro- voke us to reflect on the meaning of events by providing commentary for us to assess. After the classical Greek period the formal chorus disappeared almost entirely from drama. Remnants of the chorus can, of course, be found in later plays—even in modern drama. Bertolt Brecht’s political satire, The Threepenny Opera, for example, contains several songs that comment explicitly on the social implications of the play. But for us as readers the important matter is to recognize that choric characters persist in drama despite the absence of a formally designated chorus. Minor char- acters such as messengers, servants, clowns, or others not directly involved782 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA. in the action, can carry out the functions of a chorus, as does the Doctor at the end of Everyman. Characters involved in the action can also function as choric commentators, particularly if they are, like Eliante in The Misan- thrope, endowed with a highly reasonable disposition. Ultimately, any char- acter is capable of becoming a commentator of a sort, simply by standing off from the action and viewing it as a spectator rather than as a participant. And their reflections should be taken no less seriously than those of a cho- rus, After all, like Nora in the last scene of A Doll’s House, or Othello in his last speech of the play, characters can be the most discerning judges of their world. Drama and Meditation When we recall that interaction through dialogue is the basis of drama, we can readily see that a play is committed by its very nature to showing us the public side of its characters. Realizing this, we can see as well the artistic problem a dramatist faces when trying to reveal the private side of such characters. The narrator of a story can solve this problem simply by telling us the innermost thoughts of the characters. But a dramatist must turn to the conventions of the poem, using words addressed by a speaker talking or thinking to himself. When reading a purely lyric poem, we automatically assume that the situation is private rather than public and that we can overhear the words even though they might never be spoken aloud. In reading or witnessing a play, we must make a similar imaginative effort. To assist our efforts, drama- tists have traditionally organized their plays so as to make sure that a char- acter thinking to himself is seen in private. That special situation is implied by our term soliloquy, which means (literally) to speak alone. But it is also true that we have private thoughts even in the presence of others, and this psychological reality has been recognized by modern dramatists whose characters may often be seen thinking to themselves in the most public situations. Whatever the circumstances, private or public, the soliloquy makes unusual demands on both actors and audience. As readers we should be aware that the soliloquy can perform a variety of functions, and, since it is so unusual an element in drama, it achieves its purposes with great effectiveness. Customarily, the soliloquy is a means of giving expression to a complex state of mind and feeling, and in most cases the speaker is seen struggling with problems of the utmost consequence. This accounts for the intensity we often find in the soliloquy. We are all familiar, for example, with Hamlet's predicaments—to be or not to be, to kill or not to kill the king—and these are typical of the weighty issues that usually burden the speaker of a soliloquy. In soliloquy, then, the interaction among characters is replaced by the interaction of a mind with itself. When a play shifts from dramatic interaction to meditation, its process of events is temporarily suspended, and the soliloquizing character neces- 783 DRAMA AND OTHER LITERARY FORMS. sarily becomes a spectator of his world. In this way the soliloquy, like choric commentary, offers the dramatist a means of providing a point of view on the action of the play. In reading a soliloquy, then, we should examine it not only as the private revelation of a character but also as a significant form of commentary on other characters and events. Even the soliloquies of a villain such as lago can offer us valuable points of view, especially when the villain happens, like lago, to be a discerning judge of his world. In considering the soliloquy, we have been examining only an element of meditation in drama. It is also possible for plays to become primarily or even exclusively meditative—though at first this probably sounds like a contradiction of dramatic form. If drama depends on the interaction of dia- logue, how is it possible for internalized thought and feeling to be the prin- cipal subject of a play? Actually, this can happen in a number of ways. One way—a very traditional way—is to create a cast of characters who represent not persons but abstractions—who embody aspects, or qualities, or thoughts, or feelings of a single mind. In Everyman, for example, the title character is shown in conversation with other characters named Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits. Interaction among characters of that sort is clearly meant to represent the interaction of a mind with itself, and so it constitutes the dramatization of a meditative experience achieved through what we might call an allegory of the mind. We can also recognize plays dramatizing the life of the mind through methods other than allegory. Many modern plays, such as Death of a Sales- man, or A Streetcar Named Desire, or Equus, include not only soliloquies and other kinds of monologue but also imaginary sequences depicting dreams and fantasies. And some contemporary plays, such as Krapp’s Last Tape, consist exclusively of a single character talking to himself. Plays such as these reflect the influence of modern psychological theories about the behavior of the mind. Writing in 1932, for example, Eugene O'Neill defined the “modern dramatist’s problem” as discovering how to “express those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of psychology continue to disclose to us.” Almost fifty years earlier, in 1888, the Swedish dramatist Strindberg anticipated the same idea: “I have noticed that what interests people most nowadays is the psychological action.” Looking at their statements side by side, we can see that they share the same concern. O'Neill speaks of “hidden conflicts of the mind,” and Strindberg of “psy- chological action.” We might also call it meditative drama. Whatever form a meditative drama may take, we as readers must be alert to the “hidden conflicts” it aims to dramatize. To recognize such conflicts we must be attentive not only to the external action but also to what we might call the internal action. We should examine both plot and dialogue for what they can tell us about the mental life of the characters. And rather than looking for a clearly defined sequence of events, we should expect to find a kind of movement as irregular and hazy as the workings of the mind itself,784 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA Drama and Persuasion A play could be exclusively a piece of persuasion only if it consisted of a single character—the dramatist!—addressing ideas directly to the audi- ence. In such an event, of course, it would be difficult to distinguish the play from a lecture. This extreme case should remind us that drama is rarely, if ever, simply an exposition or assertion of ideas. Ideas can, of course, be found throughout the dialogue of almost any play, but, as we have seen in the preceding sections, it is best to assume that those ideas are sentiments of the characters rather than the opinions of the dramatist. A character is a character. A dramatist is a dramatist. And dramatists are never present to speak for themselves, except in prefaces, prologues, epilogues, stage di- rections—and other statements outside the framework of the play. Although dramatists cannot speak for themselves, their plays can. The essential quality of drama—interaction—may be made to serve the pur- poses of an essay. Dialogue, plot, and character may be used to expound ideas and sway the opinions of an audience. The desire to persuade usually implies the existence of conflicting ideas, and plays with a persuasive inten- tion customarily seek to demonstrate the superiority of one idea, or set of attitudes, over another. Thus characters may become spokesmen for ideas, dialogue a form of debating ideas, and action a form of testing ideas. Plays of this kind inevitably force audiences and readers to examine the merits of each position and align themselves with one side or the other. In reading such plays, we must be attentive not only to the motives and personalities of characters but also to the ideas they espouse. Similarly, we must be in- terested not only in the fate of the characters but also in the success or failure of their ideas. Ultimately, then, these plays do not allow us the plea- sure of simply witnessing the interaction of characters. Like essays, they seek to challenge our ideas and change our minds. Because they focus on conflicting beliefs and ideas, plays with a persua- sive intention often embody elements similar to a formal argument or de- bate. Like The Misanthrope or Major Barbara, they usually set up opposing values in their opening scenes. In the first scene of The Misanthrope, for example, Philinte espouses social conformity, Alceste opposes him by de- fending personal integrity; and their disagreement produces a debate that continues throughout the play. In much the same way, the opening act of Major Barbara establishes a conflict between the Salvation Army philosophy of Barbara and the economic-political vision of Undershaft. In defending their ideas, these characters behave so much like contestants in a debate that their dialogue sounds like disputation rather than conversation. And in the process of reading or witnessing each debate, we are clearly invited to take a stand ourselves, to side with one view or the other. The choice, of course, is not an easy one, and each play is designed to keep us from mak- ing a simple choice. Modes of Drama DRAMA, THE WORLD, AND IMITATION Drama, as we said at the start, creates a world modeled on our own: its essence is imitative action. But drama is not imitative in the ordinary sense of the word. It does not offer us a literal copy of reality, for the truth of drama does not depend upan reproducing the world exactly as it is. Drama is true to life by being false to our conventional notions of reality. The plot of Oedipus Rex is remarkable. The abstract characters of Every- man are fantastic. The dialogue in Krapp’s Last Tape is frequently bizarre. Yet each of these plays creates a world that we recognize as being in some sense like our own. Our problem then is to define the special sense in which drama is imitative. We can begin by recognizing that its mode of imitiation must be selective rather than all-inclusive, intensive rather than extensive. It has to be, since time is short and space is limited in the the- ater. Faced with limitations in stage size and performance time, the dra- matist obviously cannot hope to reproduce the world exactly as it is. By selecting and intensifying things, however, the dramatist can emphasize the dominant patterns and essential qualities of human experience. Thus, our understanding of any play requires that we define the principle of emphasis that determines the make-up of its world and the experience of its characters. In defining the emphasis of any play, we can ask ourselves whether the dramatist has focused on the beautiful or the ugly, on the orderly or the chaotic, on what is best or on what is worst in the world. A play that emphasizes the beautiful and the orderly tends toward an idealized vision of the world—which is the mode we call romance. A play focusing on the ugly and chaotic tends toward a debased view of the world, and this we call satire. Both these emphases depend for their effect upon extreme views of human nature and existence.786 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA In contrast to the extreme conditions of romance and satire, another pair of dramatic processes takes place in a world neither so beautiful as that of romance nor so ugly as that of satire—in a world more nearly like our own. Rather than focusing on essential qualities in the world, these processes—comedy and tragedy—emphasize the dominant patterns of experience that characters undergo in the world. In comedy the principal characters ordinarily begin in a state of opposition either to one another or to their world—often both. By the end of the play, their opposition is replaced by harmony. Thus the characters are integrated with one another and with their world. In tragedy, however, the hero and his world begin in a condition of harmony that subsequently disintegrates, leaving him by the end of the play completely isolated or destroyed. With these four possibilities in mind, we might draw a simple diagram such as this: ROMANCE, (beauty) COMEDY (integrative) _TRAGEDY (disintegrative) SATIRE (ugliness) ‘ The vertical pair emphasize the essential qualities in the world; the horizontal pair emphasize the dominant patterns of human experience; the point of intersection—the absence of emphasis—refers to the world as it is. In this way we can immediately visualize cach of the emphases, its distinguishing characteristics, and its relation to each of the others. Once we have recognized these possibilities, we might be tempted simply to categorize plays in terms of the characteristics we have identified with each emphasis. Yet it should be kept in mind that each emphasis is at best an abstraction—a definition formulated in order to generalize about a great number of plays, not an explanation of any one play in particular. Thus, when we turn to individual plays we should not necessarily expect that they can be accurately described and understood simply by labeling them comedy or tragedy, satire or romance. As a way of anticipating some of the complexities, we can see in the diagram that each emphasis borders on two others. Comedy, for example, tends toward romance, on the one hand, and satire, on the other. The same is true of tragedy, and the others. Even the antithetical possibilities, as we will see, can interact. But this should hardly surprise us: if the world can incorporate both the beautiful and the ugly, so can a play. Ultimately, then, these categories will serve us best if we use them tactfully as guides to 787 TRAGEDY AND COMEDY understanding rather than as a rigid system of classification. But before they can serve us as guides, we must familiarize ourselves with their characteris- tics in greater detail. TRAGEDY AND COMEDY Tragedies usually end in death and mourning, comedies in marriage and dancing. That difference accounts for the two familiar masks of drama, one expressing sorrow, the other joy, one provoking tears, the other laughter. That difference also accounts for the commonly held notion that tragedy is serious, and comedy frivolous. But when we consider that both modes are probably descended from primitive fertility rites—tragedy from ritual sac- rifice, comedy from ritual feasting—we can recognize that they dramatize equally important dimensions of human experience. Tragedy embodies the inevitability of individual death, comedy the irrepressibility of social rebirth. So, like autumn and spring, tragedy and comedy are equally significant phases in a natural cycle of dramatic possibilities. Indeed, like the seasons of the year and the nature of human experience, they are inextricably bound up with one another. Every comedy contains a potential tragedy—the faint possibility that harmony may not be achieved, that the lovers may not come together to form a new society. And every tragedy contains a potential comedy—the faint possibility that disaster may be averted, that the hero or heroine may survive. This in turn should remind us that we must be concerned not only with the distinctive endings of tragedy and of comedy, but also with the means by which each brings about its end. Catastrophe in and of itself does not constitute tragedy, nor does marriage alone make for comedy. The unique experience of each mode is produced by the design of its plot and the nature of the characters who take part in it. We can grasp this principle most clearly by looking first at the elements of tragedy, then at the elements of comedy. Tragedy was first defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 8.c.), who inferred its essential elements from witnessing the plays of his own time. His observations, which he set down in the Poetics, cannot be expected to explain all the tragedies that have ever been written; no single theory could possibly do so. But Aristotle’s theory has influenced more dramatists—and critics—than any other propounded since his time, and thus it remains the best guide we have to the nature of tragedy. Aristotle considered plot to be the most important element of tragedy, because he believed that ‘‘all human happiness or misery takes the form of action,” that “it is in our actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse.” Thus, in discussing tragedy, he emphasized the design of the plot and established several important qualities that contribute to its effect. First, he stressed the unity of a tragic plot. By unity he meant that the plot788 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA represents a single action, or story, with a definite beginning, middle, and end, and further that all its incidents are “so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin or dislocate the whole.” By close connection he also meant that the incidents are causally re- lated to one another, so that their sequence is probable and necessary. Ulti- mately, then, we can see that, in emphasizing the unity of a tragic plot, Aristotle was calling attention to the quality of the inevitable that we associate with tragedy. Thus in reading a tragedy we should attempt to define the chain of cause and effect linking each incident in the plot. In this way we will understand the process that makes its catastrophe inevitable, and thus gain insight into the meaning of the catastrophe. In examining the plot of a tragedy such as Oedipus Rex, we may be tempted to regard its catastrophe as not only inevitable but also inescapa- ble. Aristotle, however, did not see the inevitable change in the fortunes of the tragic hero as being the result of chance, or coincidence, or fate, or even of some profound flaw in the character of the hero. Rather, he saw the change of fortune as being caused by “some error of judgment,” a “great error,”” on the part of the hero. In defining this element of tragedy, Aristotle clearly regarded the hero or heroine, and not some condition beyond hu- man control, as responsible for initiating the chain of events leading to the change of fortune. Even a profound flaw in character, after all, is beyond human control. Accordingly, Aristotle described the tragic hero as an “intermediate kind of personage” in moral character, neither “preemi- nently virtuous and just,"’ nor afflicted “by vice and depravity’—as some- one morally “like ourselves,” in whom we can engage our emotional concern. Thus, when we read tragedies such as Oedipus Rex or Othello, we should not regard their protagonists as victims of absurd circumstances, but rather should seek to identify the sense in which they are agents of their undoing. While we seek to understand the nature of their error, we should not forget that most tragic heroes are genuinely admirable characters—persons, as Aristotle tells us, who deservedly enjoy “great reputation and prosper- ity.” And their reputation is a function not simply of their social rank but also of their commitment to noble purposes. Oedipus is not merely a king but also a man committed to discovering the truth and ridding his city of the plague. Othello is not only a military leader but also a man committed to moral purity in all his actions as well as in all his personal relations. Romeo and Juliet are not simply the children of aristocratic families but also persons committed to a love that transcends the pettiness of family squabbles and political factions. Our response to them should thus combine judgment with sympathy and admiration. Once we make the effort to discover their error, we shall find that we undergo an experience parallel to that of the protagonists themselves. We shall find that we are compelled by the process of events—by the turn of the 789 TRAGEDY AND COMEDY plot—to recognize how they have undone themselves. The protagonist's act of recognition is defined by Aristotle as the discovery, because it entails “a change from ignorance to knowledge.” And the discovery, as Aristotle recognized, is caused inevitably by a reversal, an incident or sequence of incidents that go contrary to the protagonist's expectations. Reversal and discovery are crucial elements of the tragic experience, because they crystalize its meaning for the protagonist—and for us. When events go contrary to their expectations, when the irony of their situation becomes evident, they—and we—have no choice but to recognize exactly how the noblest intentions can bring about the direst consequences. Thus, in its discovery, as in its entire plot, tragedy affirms both the dignity and the frailty of man. Discovery scenes take place in comedy as well, but, rather than account ing for an inevitable disaster, comic discoveries reveal information that enables characters to avoid a probable catastrophe. Lost wills may be found, or mistaken identities corrected, or some other fortuitous circumstance may be revealed. Somehow comedy always manages to bring about a happy turn of events for its heroes and heroines—and thus those heroes and heroines are rarely the sole or primary agents of their success. Usually, in fact, they get a large helping hand from chance, or coincidence, or some other lucky state of affairs. Comedy thrives on improbability. And in doing so it defies the mortal imperatives of tragedy. In this sense comedy embodies the spirit of spring with its eternal promise of rebirth and renewal, and it embodies, too, the festive air and festive activities we associate with spring. The term comedy, in fact, is derived from a Greek word, komoidia, meaning revel-song, and revelry always finds its way into comedy, whether in the form of feasts and danc- ing, tricks and joking, sex and loving—or all of them combined. So the perils that develop in the world of comedy rarely seem very perilous to us. Although the characters themselves may feel temporarily threatened, the festive air makes us sense that ultimately no permanent damage will be done, and thus we share the perspective of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when he says: Jack shall have Jill, Naught shall go ill, The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. Though comedy avoids the experience of death, it does not evade the significance of life. Comic plots, in fact, usually arise out of conflicts that embody opposing values and beliefs. Thus the conflicts among characters inevitably pit one set of attitudes against another, one kind of social vision against another, These competing attitudes are resolved, in turn, by the resolution of the plot, In reading comedies, therefore, we should attempt to identily the attitudes that bring characters into conflict, In A Midsummer790 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA Night’s Dream the young lovers, Hermia and Lysander, are committed to their vows of true love, but Hermia’s father is committed to his parental authority. In Major Barbara, Lady Britomart is committed to social tradition, Barbara to social philanthropy, and Undershaft to social engineering. Once we have identified those conflicting values, we will discover that they can help us to understand the meaning of a comic plot Comedy usually begins with a state of affairs dominated by one kind of social idea, and thus the resolution of a comic plot—achieved through its scenes of discovery—embodies the triumph of a new social order. Whoever wins out in comedy is invariably on the right side, no matter how improb- able the victory may seem. Thus it is that the characters who oppose the new order of things—the blocking figures—are usually subjected to comic ridicule throughout the play. Comedy, after all, expresses an irreverent attitude toward old and inflexible ideas, toward any idea that stifles natural and reasonable impulses in the human spirit. But comedy, as we said ear- lier, also embodies the generous and abundant spirit of spring. Its heroes and heroines—the proponents of the new society—always seek to include their opponents in the final comic festivities. Comedy seeks not to destroy the old, but rather to reclaim it. And therein is to be seen the ultimate expression of its exuberant faith in life. SATIRE AND ROMANCE Satire and romance, rather than dramatizing the dominant patterns of hu- man experience, embody the essential qualities and potentialities of human nature. Romance bears witness to what humanity can be at its best, satire to what it can be at its worst. Romance offers us an idealized vision of hu- man potentiality, satire a spectacle of inferior human conduct. Thus, when we encounter plays in these modes, we should not expect to find the mor- ally “intermediate kind” of character of whom Aristotle speaks in his dis- cussion of tragedy. Rather we should expect to encounter characters who tend toward moral, social, or psychological extremes of behavior. For the same reason, we should not expect finely detailed personalities with com- plex motivations. Rather, we should expect characters who represent types of human nature dominated by clear-cut attitudes and impulses. Satire and romance are intended ultimately to produce clear-cut images of good or evil, virtue or vice, wisdom or folly; and those images may be embodied most vividly in characters who are boldly outlined rather than finely detailed. Such qualities may also be highlighted through contrast. Thus, the plots of satire and romance often bring together characters from both extremes, using their interaction to create emphatic contrasts. We can best understand these elements by looking first at satire, then at romance. Satiric drama always expresses a critical attitude toward a particular aspect 71 SATIRE AND ROMANCE of human conduct and affairs. The satire may focus on morality, society, politics, or some other dimension of human nature and culture. Our first purpose in reading a satiric play should thus be to identify the focus of its criticism, as we can do by examining the characters themselves to see what particular types of behavior predominate among them. In Ben Jonson's Volpone, for example, all the leading characters in the first act—Volpone, Mosca, Corvino, Corbaccio, and Voltore—are obsessed by material greed. The principal character, Volpone, is motivated additionally by lust and pride. In short, the world of Volpone impresses us as being morally corrupt. In The Misanthrope, most of the characters are motivated by social ambiti- ousness. Céliméne is a malicious gossip and an incurable coquette, Arsinoe a jealous and hypocritical prude, Oronte a vain poet and officious lover, Acaste and Clitandre a matched pair of pretentious fops. Even Alceste, the “misanthrope,”’ the self-proclaimed enemy of social pretensions, is badly flawed by his extraordinary egotism. The world of these characters thus strikes us as a false and shallow society. Once we have identified the dominant vices of the characters, we should explore the consequences of their behavior, and we can do so by examining the incidents of the plot. In Volpone, for example, the greed of the characters is shown to threaten the ethical and legal foundations of their society, In The Misanthrope the social pretensions of the characters are shown to make them incapable of loving one another or feeling genuine affection for one another. Thus in each case the plot is designed to dramatize not only the vice but also its moral or social implications. Satiric plots incorporate discovery scenes as well, and the discoveries of satire inevitably bring about the public exposure of the principal characters. Volpone, for example, is exposed in court and legally punished. Céliméne is exposed in her own house and subjected to social ridicule. As those discovery scenes indicate, satiric drama does not necessarily offer us a completely pessimistic spectacle of human affairs. Indeed, we will usually find that a satire incorporates at least a few virtuous characters. Celia and Bonario in Volpone are completely generous and trusting individuals— 0 much so that they are almost helpless to prevent themselves from being victimized by the others. And in The Misanthrope, Philinte and particularly Eliante are sensible enough to transcend the shallowness of their society. These characters, by representing the virtuous potentiality of human nature, not only highlight the ugliness surrounding them in the satiric world but also remind us in the end that humanity is not—and need not be—depraved. In other words, satire offers us an intensified but not completely negative view of human imperfection. Romance, by analogy, offers us an intensified but not completely idealized sion of human excellence. The heroes of romance, for example, are typically shown in conflict with characters representing aspects of human imperfection or depravity. Prospero in The Tempest is threatened by his792 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA. malign brother Antonio, who embodies the sin of pride; Everyman is tempted by Fellowship and Goods, who embody the evils of worldliness. Although these heroes triumph over the malign forces in their world, the struggle is perilous, and their success inevitably requires the assistance of miraculous events or supernatural powers. Prospero depends on his magic wand and on Ariel, the spirit who performs extraordinary deeds for him. And Everyman can redeem his soul only through the miraculous power of the sacraments. In this respect the heroes of dramatic romance resemble their counterparts in a well-known narrative form of romance, the medieval tale of chivalric love and adventure, which portrays virtuous knights doing battle with evil monsters and triumphing over them through the power of a magic sword or some other kind of talisman. Their miraculous power, of course, is derived from, and symbolic of, their commitment to the forces of goodness and truth in their world. And that condition should remind us that romance typically assumes the existence of a divinely ordered world, in which the hero succeeds because he recognizes that order and is obedient to it, In reading or witnessing a romance play, such as The Tempest or Every- man, we must make a similar commitment ourselves. We must be willing to believe in the possibility of a supernatural power. That act of belief, however, is nothing more than an extension of our willingness to accept the imaginative premises of any story or play. Once we do so, we can see that romance drama develops plausibly within its special premises, that the miraculous achievements of its heroes are genuinely deserved. Prospero in the end is able to redeem his kingdom because he recognizes the persis- tence of evil in his world and the necessity to be eternally vigilant against it. And Everyman at last is able to redeem his soul because he recognizes the y of clinging to bodily life, as well as the necessity to accept its inevitable demise. Thus the discovery scenes of romance, which reveal the hero’s miraculous achievement, are prepared for by the hero's heightened state of moral or spiritual awareness. And that awareness always includes a recognition of human frailty. In this sense, as in its plot and characters, the idealized vision of romance never completely ignores the actual conditions of the world. fu TRAGICOMEDY, NATURALISM, AND ABSURDIST DRAMA Tragedy, comedy, satire, and romance—each of those primary modes embodies its own unique pattern of dramatic experience. As we have seen, each incorporates distinctly different kinds of plots and characters, dis~ tinctly different kinds of conflicts and discovery scenes, and each achieves a distinctly different view of human existence. Thus, when we read or witness a tragedy or comedy, a satire or romance, we undergo an expericnce that is 793 TRAGICOMEDY, NATURALISM, AND ABSURDIST DRAMA more or less clear-cut. We feel sorrow or joy, scorn or admiration. We know, in short, exactly how we feel, exactly what we think. But some plays—many modern plays, especially—do not arouse such clear-cut responses. As we read or witness them, our feelings and judg- ments may well be confused, or ambiguous, or mixed in one way or an- other. We may well feel torn between sorrow and joy, scorn and admiration. Indeed, we may not know exactly how we feel, or exactly what we think. When we find ourselves experiencing such mixed feelings, we will probably also discover that the play itself has been designed to leave us in an unre- solved state of mind—that it does not embody a clear-cut pattern of catas- trophe or rebirth (as in tragedy or comedy) or present clear-cut images of good or evil (as in romance or satire). Many plays, rather than being domi- nated by a single mode, actually combine differing or opposing modes of dramatic experience. In describing such works we use the term tragicom- edy—not as a value judgment but as a means of defining the ambiguous experience that we witness in the play and feel within ourselves. Tragicom- edy, then, leaves us with a complex reaction, similar to the uncertainty we often feel in response to life itself. Uncertainty—about the nature of human existence—is a fundamental source of the tragicomic quality we find in many modern and contemporary plays. In some, that quality is produced by a naturalistic view of human nature and experience—a view of men and women as influenced by psy- chological, social, and economic forces so complex that their character and behavior cannot be easily judged or explained. That view of human nature led Strindberg, for example, to create characters whom he describes in his preface to Miss Julie as being “somewhat ‘characterless’ “—characters, that is, who are influenced by “a whole series of motives,” rather than by any single, or simple, purpose. Like other naturalistic dramatists, Strindberg is unwilling to offer us simple explanations to account for human behavior: A suicide is committed. Business troubles, says the man of affairs. Unrequited love, say the women. Sickness, says the invalid. Despair, says the down-and out. But itis possible that the motive lay in all or none of these directions, or that the dead man concealed his actual motive by revealing quite another, likely to re- flect more to his glory. Just as we cannot definitely account for their actions, so too the charac- ters in naturalistic drama cannot themselves perceive, much less control, all the forces influencing their behavior. Typically, then, the protagonists of naturalistic drama, such as Nora in A Doll’s House, Julie in Miss Julie, Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Troy Maxson in Fences, are placed in dramatic situations portraying them as being in some sense victims of their environment. They may attempt to alter their circumstances, as does Nora, or they may gradually lose control of their circumstances, as does Julie, or they may acquiesce in them, as does Brick, or they may sit in794 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA judgment upon them, as do the women; but whatever action they take, it does not lead to a clear-cut resolution of the kind we associate with trag- edy and comedy. Nor does their situation allow us to make the clear-cut moral judgment that we do of characters in satire and romance. ‘Vice has a reverse side very much like virtue,” as Strindberg reminds us. Thus, nat- uralistic drama leaves us with a problematic view of human experience, and the most we can hope for is to understand, to the degree that we humanly can, the psychological, social, and economic circumstances that are con- tributing to the problematic situations of its characters. In some contemporary plays the problematic situation is produced by conditions that transcend even naturalistic explanations. In these plays we sense the presence of some profound situation that afflicts the characters but is in the end indefinable. In Beckett's Endgame, for example, we find the principal characters existing in a world where all the elements of nature seem to be on the verge of extinction; yet the cause of that condition re- mains a mystery. In Krapp’s Last Tape, we are faced with a single character, namely Krapp, whose existence is defined almost exclusively by an insa- tiable appetite for bananas, an unquenchable thirst for soda-water, and an obsessive fixation on his tape-recorded diary. These mysterious, even ri- diculous, circumstances lead us to wonder whether there is any ultimate source of meaning at all in the world of those plays, or for that matter whether there is any rational source of explanation at al/ for the experience of the characters. For this reason, such plays are known as absurdist drama. Their absurdity is usually evident not only in plot but in dialogue as well. Often, for example, the conversation of characters in absurdist drama does not make perfect sense, either because they are talking at cross purposes, or because their language has no clear point of reference to anything in their world. Yet even as we read the dialogue we will find it to be at once laughably out of joint and terrifyingly uncommunicative. In much the same way we may be puzzled by the resolution of these plays—wondering whether the characters’ situation at the end is in any significant respect different from what it was at the beginning, wondering whether the play is tragic or comic, wondering even whether there is any single word, or con- cept, such as tragicomedy, that can adequately express the possibility that human existence may be meaningless. Ultimately, then, absurdist drama like the other modes does embody a view of human existence; but rather than perceiving existence as dominated by one pattern or another, one quality or another, that view implies that existence may have no pattern or meaning at all. Elements of Drama CONTEXTS, MODES, AND THE ELEMENTS OF DRAMA Characters, dialogue, plot—these are the indispensable elements of drama. Together they make possible the imitative world of every play, for charac- ters are like people, dialogue and plot like the things they say and do. But likeness does not mean identicalness. As we indicated in our discussion of dramatic modes, the truth of drama does not depend upon reproducing the world exactly as it is. For this reason, we should not expect to find characters who talk and act in just the same way that people do, nor should we expect to find plots that develop in just the same way that ordinary events do. The characters who populate romance and satire, for example, are modeled less on specific people than on human potentialities. Similarly the plots elaborated in comedy and tragedy are based less on real ocsiae| rences than on basic patterns of human experience. The elements of drama, then, are highly specialized versions of the elements that make up the world as it is. The particular version we encounter in any single play will be determined by a variety of circumstances—by the mode of the play, the Purpose of the play, the literary form of the play, and the design of the theater for which it was written. Thus we should always keep these circumstances in mind when we study the elements of drama. DIALOGUE the give-and-take of dialogue is a specialized form of conversation. De- signed as it is to serve the needs created by the various contexts and modes of drama, it can hardly be expected to sound lite our customary patterns of speech. In ordinary conversation, for example, we adjust our style to meet the needs of the people with whom we are talking, and we reinforce our words with a wide range of facial expressions, bodily gestures, and vocal796 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA. inflections, many of which we perform unconsciously. If we recognize that we are not being understood, we may stammer momentarily while trying to rephrase our feelings and ideas. Then, before we can get the words out, someone may have interrupted us and completely changed the topic of conversation. Whatever the case, we find ourselves continually adjusting to circumstances that are as random as our thoughts and the thoughts of those with whom we are talking. If we were to transcribe and then listen to the tape of an ordinary conversation, even one that we considered coherent and orderly, we would probably find it far more erratic and incoherent than we had imagined. Drama cannot afford to reproduce conversation as faithfully as a tape recorder. To begin with, the limitations of performance time require that characters express their ideas and feelings much more economically than we do in the leisurely course of ordinary conversation. The conditions of theatrical performance demand also that dialogue be formulated so that it can be not only heard by characters talking to one another but also overheard and understood by the audience in the theater. Thus the continuity of dialogue must be very clearly marked out at every point. On the basis of what is overheard, the audience—or the reader—must be able to develop a full understanding of the characters and the plot. Dialogue, then, is an extraordinarily significant form of conversation, for it is the means by which every play conveys the total make-up of its imaginative world. And this is not all. Dialogue must fulfill the needs of not only the audience but also the director, the set designer, and the actors. This means that the dialogue must serve as a script for all the elements of production and performance—for the entire theatrical realization of a play. Because it has to serve so many purposes all at once, dialogue is necessarily a more artificial form of discourse than ordinary conversation. Thus, in reading any segment of dialogue, we should always keep in mind its special purposes. It is a script for theatrical production, and that means that we should see what it can tell us about the total spectacle: the setting, the arrangement of characters on the stage, their physical movements, gestures, facial expressions, and inflections. It is also a text for conveying the imaginative world of the play, which means that we should see what it can tell us about the character speaking, the character listening, and the other characters not present; about the public and private relations among, the characters, the past as well as present circumstances of the characters, and the quality of the world they inhabit; about the events that have taken. place prior to the play, the events that have taken place offstage during the play, the events that have caused the interaction of the characters during the dialogue itself, and the events that are likely to follow from their interaction. If we read the dialogue with all these concerns in mind, we will find in the end that it takes us out of ourselves and leads us into the imaginative experience of the play. 77 PLOT PLOT Plot is a specialized form of experience. We can see just how specialized it is if we consider for a moment what happens during the ordinary course of our daily experience. Between waking and sleeping, we probably converse with a number of people and perform a variety of actions. But most of these events have very little to do with one another, and they usually serve no purpose other than our pleasure, our work, or our bodily necessities. In general, the events that take place in our daily existence do not embody a significant pattern or process. If they have any pattern at all, it is merely the product of habit and routine. In drama, however, every event is part of a carefully designed pattern and process. And this is what we call plot. Plot, then, is not at all like the routine, and often random, course of our daily existence. Rather it is a wholly interconnected system of events, deliberately selected and arranged for the purpose of fulfilling a complex set of imaginative and theatrical purposes. Plot is thus an extremely artificial element, and it has to be so. Within the limits of a few hours the interest of spectators—and readers—has to be deeply engaged and continuously sustained. That requires a system of events that quickly develops complications and suspense, and leads in turn to a climax and resolution. Interest must also be aroused by events that make up a process capable of being represented on stage. And the totality of events must create a coherent imitation of the world. In order to understand how plot fulfills these multiple purposes, we should first recognize that it comprises everything that takes place in the imaginative world of a play. In other words, plot is not confined to what takes place on stage: it includes off-stage as well as on-stage action, reported as well as represented action. In The Misanthrope, for example, we witness a process that includes among other events a lawsuit brought against Alceste, tried in court, and judged in favor of his enemy. Yet we never actually see his enemy, nor do we hear the case being tried. We only hear about it—before and after it takes place—irom the dialogue of Alceste and Philinte. Obviously the lawsuit does take place within the imaginative world of the play. It is part of the plot. But it is not part of what we call the scenario—the action occurring on stage. Thus, if we wish to identify the plot of a play, we have to distinguish it from the scenario. The scenario embodies the plot and presents it to us, but it is not itself the plot. We can understand this distinction in another way if we realize that in a plot all the events are necessarily arranged chronologically. whereas in a scenario events are arranged dramatically—that is, in an order that will Create the greatest impact on the audience. In some cases that may result in non-chronological order. We may well reach the end of a scenario before we learn about events that took place years before. For this reason, in studying the plot of a play, we must consider not only the events of which it798 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA consists but also the order in which those events are presented by the scenario. The ordering of events can best be grasped if we think of the scenario as being constructed of a series of dramatic units: each time a character enters or leaves the stage a new dramatic unit begins. The appearance or departure of a character or group of characters is thus like a form of punctuation that we should take special note of whenever we are reading or witnessing a play. As one grouping of characters gives way to another, the dramatic situation necessarily changes—sometimes slightly, sometimes very perceptibly—to carry the play forward in the evolution of its process and the fulfillment of its plot. Thus we should examine each unit individually, to discover not only what on-stage action takes place within it but also what off-stage action is revealed within it. Then we should determine how the off-stage action that is reported affects the on-stage action, as well as how it shapes our own understanding of the characters and the plot. In the opening dramatic unit of Oedipus Rex, for example, we witness a conversation between Oedipus and a Priest, in which the Priest pleads with Oedipus to rid Thebes of the plague, while Oedipus assures the Priest that he is eager to cure the city of its sickness. During that conversation we also learn from the Priest that, in years past, Oedipus had through his wisdom and knowledge liberated the city from the domination of the Sphinx, and we learn from Oedipus that he has recently sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to seek advice from the oracle at Delphi. These two reports of off-stage action establish the heroic stature of Oedipus, revealing him to be an exceptionally effective and responsible leader. The dramatic unit leads the Priest and Oedipus—and us as spectators—to expect that he will be equally successful in this crisis. In examining the unit we thus see that it not only identifies the motivating problem of the plot but also establishes Oedipus as the hero of the play; and that, moreover, it creates a set of positive expectations about his ability to overcome the problem. (He does, of course, overcome the problem but not without undoing himself in the process.) The unit, then, is crucial in creating a complicated mixture of true and false expectations within both the characters—and us. In addition to examining dramatic units individually, we should also examine them in relation to one another—in context. Context is important because it is one of the dramatist’s major techniques for influencing our perception and understanding of characters and plot. Dramatists usually select and arrange events so as to produce significant parallels or contrasts between them. Thus, if we look at the units in context, we will be able to perceive those relationships and their implications. Finally, of course, we must move beyond pairs and series of units to an overview of all the units together. By doing that we will be able to recognize the dominant process of the play. We will, that is, be able to perceive how it sets up the complica- tions and works toward the discoveries and resolutions of tragedy, comedy, 799 CHARACTER satire, romance, or tragicomedy. By examining the over-all design of the plot, we can thus recognize the dominant view of experience embodied in the play. On the basis of our discussion, it should be obvious that plot is an extremely complicated element, one that can be understood only through a detailed analysis of dramatic units. Here, then, are some reminders and suggestions to follow in analyzing the plot of any play. Identify all the events that take place within the plot and the chronological order in which they occur. In order to do this, examine the scenario closely, paying attention to instances of implied and reported action. Once the details and make-up of the plot have been established, then examine how the plot is presented by the scenario. In order to do this, examine each dramatic unit in detail, beginning with the first and proceeding consecutively through the play. Remember that a single dramatic unit can serve a variety of purposes. Remember, too, that every unit exists within a context of units: within the context of units that immediately precede and follow it, and within the context of all the units of the play. CHARACTER Although characters in a play are like real people in some respects, they are by no means identical to people in real life. Real people, after all, exist in the world as it is, whereas characters exist in an imaginative world shaped by the theatrical contexts and imitative purposes of drama. In the classical Greek theater, for example, a character was defined visually by the fixed expression of his or her facial mask. Clearly, it would have been impossible for spectators to regard such characters as identical to complex human per- sonalities. And if we look at Oedipus, we can see that he is conceived in terms of a few dominant traits that could be projected through the bold acting required by the enormous size of the ancient Greek theater. Even when production conditions allow for greater psychological detail, as in the relatively intimate theaters of seventeenth-century France, there are usually other circumstances that work against the formation of com- pletely lifelike characters. In The Misanthrope, for example, detailed charac- terization is less important than the essayistic form and satiric purpose of the play. Thus Alceste and Philinte have personality traits consistent with the ideas they espouse, and the other characters are exaggerated versions of objectionable human tendencies that show up in high society. They are character types consistent with Moliere’s satiric purpose. Because of its sustained interest in psychological behavior, modern drama tends to put a great deal of emphasis on character. Yet even plays—such as A Doll’s House, Miss Julie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—that are concerned specifically with the workings of the human mind, do not embody characters who can be taken as identical to real people. It would800 ELEMENTS OF DRAMA. be misleading to think of Nora, Julie, or Brick, for example, or any other principal characters in these plays, as fully developed personalities. Al though they do represent complex studies in human psychology, they are conceived to dramatize specific ideas about the impact of the family and society upon the individual. In other words, they exhibit patterns of be- havior that are typical rather than actual. Although dramatic characters are not real people, they are endowed with human capacities. They talk and act and interact with one another. They experience pleasure and endure pain. They feel, and they act on their feelings. They believe, and they act according to their beliefs. It would thus be inhuman of us not to respond to their humanity. But we can only respond appropriately if we know what we are responding to: we have to consider all of the ways in which characters are revealed and defined by dialogue and plot. The most immediate way to understand a character is to examine in detail everything the character says, in order to identify the important attitudes, beliefs, and feelings of that character. Examine not only the content but also the style of such utterances. Look, for example, at the kinds of words, and images, and sentence structures that mark the character's dialogue, for often these elements of style provide insight into subtle aspects of charac- ter. A further source of information is what others in the play say about the character. Since characters, like real people, are repeatedly talking about ‘one another—to their faces and behind their backs—what they have to say often will provide valuable insights into the character. The things a character does may reveal as much as what the character says and what others have to say. In examining their actions, pay careful attention to context, for charac- ters are likely to behave differently in different situations. The problem in such a case is to determine whether the character has actually changed, for what appears to be a change in character may simply be the result of our knowing the character more fully. Another important key to understanding is to compare and contrast a character with others in the play. A study of this kind often sharpens and intensifies the perceptions we have gained from examining the character in isolation. Character analysis can be a source of pleasure and understanding in its ‘own right, but it should ultimately lead us more deeply into the play as a whole. For that reason, when we analyze characters, we should always keep in mind the theatrical contexts and imaginative purposes that shape their being. In this way we shall be truly able to appreciate the dramatic imitation of a world created by the wedding of literary and of representational art.